


Rock of Ages

by rivkat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Eight crazy nights, Gen, Judaism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/pseuds/rivkat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For elliemurasaki : what if Sam and Dean were Jewish? Note: I have made very few revisions in SPN’s supernatural canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock of Ages

Dean always thought the Winchesters were like the Maccabees. Tough fighters, winning against impossible odds, able to make anything last longer when there was no more cash or no more road. Whether it was God or just stubbornness behind them, they didn’t give in. And there was no mom in the Maccabees’ story either. He’d asked Dad just to be sure.

By the time Dean was ten, Dad was sick enough of religion that he wouldn’t have done anything on his own, but Dean kept track of the holidays for Sammy’s sake. Sammy loved the idea of the covenant (or maybe he just loved the idea of being able to argue, because damn if the boy couldn’t twist his way around a rule like nobody’s business). Dad, when he’d had a few too many, said that God was a bastard if He let demons walk the earth, and Dad knew what he was talking about, but Sammy didn’t have to.

No way was Dad keeping the Sabbath, which Dean totally understood—bad guys didn’t take the Sabbath off either—but Dean could at least make sure that they lit the candles after the nightly round of laying down salt and ashes.

****

The year Sam was twelve, Dean had his first fight with Dad, ever. “You’re not quitting school,” Dad said, with the awesome finality of a prophet. Sure, Dad had broken down and cashed in the college funds when he’d needed to build his arsenal, but there was a rock bottom.

“I’ll keep studying,” Dean swore. “Hunting lore, real stuff. You know they’re not teaching anything I really need.” You know we need the money, he didn’t say, because Dad would only deny it and move them straight out, to prove that he could take care of his boys.

In the end, Dad gave in, possibly just shocked by Dean’s resistance, a lonely outlier in over a decade of unquestioning filial obedience. They spent the whole year in Macon, Dean using his fake ID to work at a local garage, Dad traveling to hunts in a 200-mile radius. The Conservative temple didn’t want to take on a kid so late, but after Sam showed off his Hebrew, the rabbi changed his mind.

Dad missed the bar mitvah. Sam’s classmates all thought it was weird that there was no party, even though the rabbi gave a stern lecture about The Way Things Used To Be, where a boy would be called to the Torah one morning and that would be the only thing different for him—maybe he’d be offered coffee instead of milk after, if he was lucky. Self-evidently, that wasn’t how it worked any more, and Sam went from weird but smart kid to total social outcast in the space of a week, while his classmates digested the new information.

After the service, Sam probably expected Dean to make fun of him about ‘today I am a man,’ since Sam at thirteen couldn’t have looked less manly in a princess costume. Dean thought about it, but he’d seen the looks on the congregants’ faces and he could already tell how this was going to go. Even the kids who didn’t care would be hearing from their parents about how odd the Winchesters were: no proud papa, not even cake and ice cream after. So instead Dean gave Sam eighteen bucks and his first beer, and told him that as far as Dean was concerned Sam had been a man since he shot his first werewolf.

They left Macon a couple of weeks later. By then, Sam was glad to go.

****

Sam defiantly wore a kippah when he was a kid, no matter where they were in the country. Dean thought it was kind of funny that it was Stanford that flipped Sam over into wearing hats instead, maybe because covering his head was no longer some kind of rebellion. But Dean didn’t make any comments, because hats were definitely more flexible in terms of disguises. And, though he’d never, ever say it, Sam looked awesome in a fedora.

****

Dean was in a fine mood. Sam was with him, they knew Dad was alive, and neither of them were bleeding or in jail. He opened the glass door and gestured at Sam to hurry the fuck up. “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.”

Sam gave good bitchface, but he followed Dean into the diner. “You know that’s only for holidays,” he complained, resettling his hat on his head as the waitress showed them to their booth.

Dean wanted to bitch right back, but the desire to be the more mature brother just this once prevailed. If Sam wanted to slam on a family post-hunt tradition, that was no different from anything else he wanted. “It’s a joke, dude, I think it can be about any day we want. Especially a day we torched a vampire.”

Sam shot the waitress a look, checking to make sure that she wasn’t listening, but she was already halfway across the restaurant, though still making eyes at Dean.

****

Sam didn’t like to use holy water. Dean was a pragmatist. If you found a religion with lots of effective paraphernalia, you used the paraphernalia, regardless of the theology. “You own a priest outfit, Sam,” he said, annoyed, when Sam waved it off before they went to confront the demons holding Dad.

“It’s not the same.” Sam launched into this complicated explanation about belief and ritual and, whatever, purity of heart, but Dean ignored him, never having been much for purity in any form. He put on the tefillin when Sam said to, though. As stupid as they made him feel, if Rambam suggested that they’d prevent possession then he wasn’t going to ignore a potential protection like that. If they could have worn the tefillin and still dealt with civilians, he would’ve supported keeping them on twenty-four seven, but two hot guys wearing black leather boxes on their foreheads and arms tended to attract a lot more attention than two hot guys on their own.

Sam refused to get a protective tattoo instead, even after that bitch Meg took him over, but Dean figured that out: he knocked Sam out with a mickey in his beer and did the work himself, then propped Sam up in the bed, with a printout from the relevant portion of the Shulchan Arukh holding the involuntary tattooee blameless on the unmarked side of his chest for when he woke up.

****

“Mmm, bacon,” Dean said blissfully, through his mouthful.

“You’re a savage,” Sam told him.

Dean blinked at him, innocent. “Technically, I’m an apostate.”

****

When Dean returned from Hell, the fedora was gone. Dean didn’t need to ask why. He wanted his Sam back, stupid rituals and all, but he couldn’t pretend that he thought much of the God to Whom Sam would be showing respect.

He found Sam’s tallit crumpled up in the back of the Impala, like a rag. Dean took it and folded it and put it back into its embroidered bag. Just in case.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Children of the Wanderers (Rock of Ages translation)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/188236) by [Hannah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hannah/pseuds/Hannah)




End file.
